A new vision for the National Library of Medicine

Abstract

This summer, with the retirement of Donald A.B. Lindberg, MD, after 31 years from the National Library of Medicine (NLM), the National Institutes of Health director, Francis Collins, MD, PhD, charged the NLM working group to articulate a new, strategic vision for the NLM. The NLM has been a tremendous supporter of informatics, and this new report provides insight into the role that NLM will play in the future. It articulates a vision for how the NLM can continue to be a trustworthy source of biomedical data and information, an advocate for open science, a promoter of the next generation of data scientists, a protector of the legacy of the past, and a vital partner for those who are generating biomedical knowledge for the future. The NLM working group put out a request for information (RFI) (see http://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/nih\_rfi\_nlm\_working\_group.html) and received over 650 responses both domestically and internationally.1 The training programs and programs that provided access to medical information such as PubMed …